Today, feminism refers primarily to the fight for gender equality, especially in political and economic arenas. However, there is still a need to continue the work that first-wave feminists started. On a basic level, feminism is meant to achieve equal educational and economic opportunities for women. Feminism have come a long way in establishing and defending equal political, economic, and social rights for women. Women have yet to fully achieve equality with men at any level of society, but the nature of second and third-wave feminism, particularly regarding social issues, has transformed.
We still have not achieved gender equality in all areas, but we have made big progress. Today, many women work outside the home and men are more likely to help with child care. Women have careers of their own and run companies. But it hasn’t always been like this. When women first began working outside the home, they were more likely than men to find jobs as maids, nurses, and secretaries, rather than as doctors, lawyers, or business executives. There were several reasons why men were the first to move into the labor force. The nature of their work was often more mobile than that of their wives. Also, until the 1960s, most women worked in low-paying “women’s jobs,” with a high proportion working in clerical occupations. This keeps median earnings of women well below men’s; as late as 1997 only 38% of full-time workers were women and among these workers they earned.
Feminism is often criticized as being too focused on women and not focused enough on issues that may be specific to men. Second-wave feminism is considered by some critics to have accomplished its goals and currently focuses primarily on female victims of oppression. In the third wave, feminist discourse has influenced mainstream society and culture in a way that has affected both women’s and men’s stances on gender-related issues. Ancient Greece was at the center of the first Western feminist movement and Aristotle was amongst the forefathers of feminism.
The feminist movement isn’t dead that’s for sure. It’s making its presence known and felt more than ever, with the #MeToo campaign being one of the many “uprisings” that women all over the world are staging to speak up about their experiences of sexual harassment, assault, and discrimination in the workplace. The idea that women were intellectually inferior to men was at its most baleful in Ancient Greece (with Aristotle being a major influence in this) but women were also regarded as equal only in their humanity and ability to make moral choices.